Last week, the Board of Trustees put an item on their agenda which would have given ownership of all data collected at SIU or using any SIU resources to SIU. We demanded to bargain this and issued several notices of complaint. Within 24 hours of our reaching out to the BoT and other administrators, the item was withdrawn. We will stay vigilant if anything like this resurfaces.

We are bargaining the new contract right now. The two teams will put out a joint statement shortly about bargaining this far. The two teams have made real progress on some significant issues (including student engagement/office hour policy and academic freedom), and have built a positive and constructive relationship. We hope that this productivity can continue as we begin to turn to bargaining over economic issues. Faculty, particularly faculty with years of service at SIUC, are grievously underpaid. University leaders, including Chancellor Lane, have repeatedly recognized this problem of salary compression. The success of this round of bargaining will depend on whether the administration is willing and able to back up this rhetoric with the resources required to pay faculty fairly for the work we do.

We will be hosting a number of workshops related to faculty issues over the last month of the semester. Any faculty member is welcome regardless of membership status.

April 26 we will be offering Promotion and Tenure workshops at 12pm and 4:30pm. These will be held in Guyon Auditorium in Morris Library. Discussed issues will include: general procedures, contractual and non-contractual rights, grievance procedures, and other topics. Questions are welcome and encouraged. Refreshments will be available.

April 24 from 10-11 and May 3 from 10-11, we will also be hosting Operating Paper workshops for units that are still working on unit-level or college-level OPs. These workshops will cover basic elements that must be included, managing conflict with administration, general procedures, and other topics. Questions are welcome and encouraged. Refreshments will be available.

I need to offer my apologies for the lack of communication this term from the FA. As you may be aware, we faced some setbacks regarding our communication including the loss of our previous email with stored addresses. But, in another more real sense, the issue is that myself and the other members of the EC are often stretched too thin—this is an all too common experience of SIU faculty and we’ve been asked to do more and more. This is an area we do hope to make progress on, but truly apologize for the delays in communication.

In Solidarity,

Jeffrey Punske
SIUC FA President